Semiautomatic firearms have become very popular in the United States. The AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, which is similar in appearance to the selective-fire M-16 rifle and M-4 carbine used by the US military, is currently the best-selling rifle model in the United States. Another popular semiautomatic rifle model is the semi-automatic version of the Soviet-designed AK-47 rifle. A great number of different companies make versions of these rifles in various configurations.
One of the reasons these rifles have proven so popular is that there are a great many after-market parts that allow such rifles to be customized in various ways to fit the owner's particular interests. One desirable feature that remains unavailable, however, is a simple, reliable means by which such firearms may be adapted to fire linked ammunition. These particular firearms and many others like them fire ammunition that is fed from a detachable box magazine. Use of linked ammunition would allow the user to fire a greater number of rounds of ammunition without the necessity of stopping to reload the weapon by changing magazines (and, if not performed previously, filling the magazine with ammunition). Although the prior art includes a number of attempts to adapt such firearms to fire linked ammunition, none of these solutions have proven satisfactory.
References mentioned in this background section are not admitted to be prior art with respect to the present invention.